Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Tuesday April 20, 2010 @09:35AM
from the it's-all-just-a-matter-of-history-repeating dept.

Keith found an interesting story telling a bit about how Steve Jobs operates. It involves small teams of young engineers willing to work 90-hour weeks in total secrecy, and a complete willingness to throw away bad ideas without flowery language. The iPad is surprisingly similar to the Mac."

just to undercut you with a technicality, the ipad can run javascript and any and all javascript, apple doesnt (yet) force you through their proxy. Javascript is generally considered to be turing complete.

Which brings us back full circle back to the iphone launch, when you want to run any and all code on the i*, the web is your sdk...

i will happily agree though, that the ipad in its current state isnt a computer, not because of any hardware limitation (which also would have been apple imposed), but rather because of apple's "if you dont play by my rules, i'll take the ball and go home" attitude, even though users have bought the ball, the goalposts and the frickin courtyard

If I have a beef with the iPad, it's that while it's a lovely device for consuming content, it doesn't do much to facilitate its creation.

Yes, Grossman does get it right. That is my disappointment too. The iPad is all about consuming content, being a consumer. It is unlike a PC which can be used to create content. The iPad is a passive device.

It's not a computer because it's not Turing complete. And the reason it's not Turing complete, is that it can't run any program. And the reason it can't run any program is the app store moderation.

It has a lot of properties from a Turing machine, but the tape is bounded by people accepting and rejecting certain patterns.

The hardware itself is Turing complete. What you are complaining about is the stock iPhone/iPad OS. But it's like saying a computer is not Turing complete because you don't have tho administrator password to it.

"I guess you won't be satisfied unless every product that has a CPU and a display is capable of being easily hacked and fooled around with out of the box. A rather silly viewpoint."

How is that a "silly" viewpoint? I guess you think that if the manufacturers want to control people, they should be allowed to do so, no questions asked.

"That's nice, but compared to something doing translation from Flash to Objective-C, I'll take the native code, thanks."

What if I had an ActionScript compiler for the iPad? Oops, not allowed. What if I had a compiler for a language like SPARK (which is designed for reliability)...not allowed. Efforts to sidestep Apple's deliberate and unwarranted restrictions are at an inherent disadvantage, and there are a lot of high quality development tools that are simply not allowed for the iPad.

There have been a tremendous number of articles explaining that not only is the 3G service available on a pay-as-you-go, no-contract $14.99 option for 250 MB per month, but it also has an unlimited option for $30 per month. You can literally pay for a month -- maybe to take it on vacation where wifi won't necessarily be available -- then not pay for another month of 3G service until your next vacation, if that's what you want.

This is a very good thing, and I hope this type of service becomes available in other devices of this type as they come out.

What if your clock had a more complete display on it (1024x768 LCD), and you wanted to use it to do something the manufacturer did not think it should be used for -- would it be OK for the manufacturer to actively prevent you from doing so?

You mean by epoxying chips to boards, or using parts that suck for any use beyond what the device was intended for, or not doing anything to make using the device for unintended purposes easier, maybe even obfuscating things by not labeling chips, pins or wires, etc?

Yes. What planet are you from?

If it were beneficial to the manufacturer to do so, they will obfuscated, glue, use non-reusable parts all they want, they can and will do this as we speak, and it aint a new concept, bozo. The only reason most gizmos are somewhat hackable and have no obvious, outward appearances of being designed to discourage hardware hacking is that it costs $$$ per unit to implement, and the manufacturer is willing to take on the risks of customers doing stupid things with their products, shirking as much responsibility as legally possible with carefully written warranties or licensing agreements. Most places just don't care or are not worried about you doing weird shit to their product. Software, has no such costs.

Uh, you guys do know who Bruce Tognazzini is, right? Oh I forgot, your average Slashdot poster living in his mother's basement had more insight into this than the guy responsible for the original Macintosh user interface guidelines.

Can you Apple fags please stop complaining about the complaints against Apple? The complaints are valid, your counter-"arguments" are not. What you're doing is just contributing to the backlash against the massive overhype of a frankly quite ridiculous product. Do you seriously think Apple will keep its "cool" when people such as yourself type that kind of ridiculous apologetics? You're a bunch of wankers, and that's the image of Apple right now.